We're almost done with the move. Almost done fixing up the townhouse. Almost done with our wish list for the new house. The big party is on Saturday and we are tying up loose ends this week. We finally got the remaining desk piece, assembled that, and got the front room all in order. I can't even list all the things we've done (and all the money we've spent... ouch) on this house, and we haven't even lived here for three months.

In addition to the party on Saturday, my entire family is coming into town and staying for a few days. It's going to be great. We have a real guest bed in the basement and a secondary area to sleep (on a futon) in the spare room upstairs.

Evidently I've all but quit blogging and taking photos/videos. We'll see if I can get back into the swing once everything calms down here. It has been non-stop work every weekend for three months now.

I took Henry to the hospital to get some blood drawn for a routine test on Friday. I won't bore you with the details, but after two hours at the hospital and bandages on two of Henry's arms and one of his heels, I left the hospital without the requisite amount of blood having being drawn. Incompetence abounds. He had a lot of blood drawn as a newborn at that hospital and they did a great job. I don't get it. I'm also pretty tired of the medical profession dropping its collective jaw to the ground when you dare to go against anything they say. Dear doctors and hospital workers, you work for me. I am not your subordinate. Thanks.

Everything has been a whirlwind of shopping and calling people to fix various things in this house. It seems like forever since we had a weekend with no plans. Two Saturdays ago we went downtown to see Jim Gaffigan with another couple. In my opinion, he wasn't nearly as funny as the last time we saw him. Every comedian eventually spends 50% of their set talking about their kids. Also we were in the balcony on row QQ and it got quite hot up there! It was still a good time, and hey, we didn't get lost this time. This previous Saturday we went to the Birchmere with Jaime's parents to see Gaelic Storm. We've done this several times before, and as always, it was a great show at a great venue. It's part traditional Irish sound, part modern. Part music, part comedy (in a sense). Just a really good band to see live. Family-friendly show at a family-friendly venue, too.

Supposed to be a nice day on Saturday weather-wise. Here's hoping everything goes as planned.

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January 09, 2012

We went to four furniture stores last weekend. One of the places we went was a gigantic warehouse with high-quality luxury furniture at a discount. Expensive wholesale furniture dealer. After looking at about three items, we knew this place was too rich for our blood, but we had a good time looking around anyway. They had a lot of great stuff, but they also had a lot of hideous fabrics. One of the funniest things we saw was this blue alligator print chair. It wasn't just a print, it was actually textured like alligator skin. Maybe it was some kind of custom leather? I don't know. It reminded me of a movie scene set in a 1920's whorehouse or something. By the way, I'm pretty sure these were $1800 a piece.

January 28, 2012

What a great weekend. On Saturday we set up a babysitter trial. We had someone that Jaime works with come over about two hours before the boys' nap time and we went out and did a lot of errands. We are going to need a babysitter on March 3 when we are attending a concert with Jaime's parents (our usual babysitters), so we set this up for Saturday as a trial run. It went very well. We arrived home at 3pm to find two sleeping children and one babysitter reading a novel on the playroom floor. We went to four furniture stores looking for dining room tables, and ended up settling on the first one we liked from the first store (that sort of thing seems to happen more often than not, doesn't it?). We also stopped by the old condo to get a carload of stuff and grabbed lunch at Don Pablo's.

Yesterday we went bowling for the first time in a long time and Stephen absolutely loved it. It's so cute to watch him carry his own ball up to the ramp. He doesn't understand the concept of taking turns and it can get quite exhausting trying to prevent him from constantly carrying his ball up to the lane. He came very close to breaking 100 on the first game. He uses the ramp and the bumpers, but he didn't receive any help from us.

For a few weeks it seemed like we were lagging with the move and setting everything up, but suddenly here we are, six weeks after the big move date. We have a newly fenced in back yard, we have coverings on all the windows (when we moved we had NONE), we've hung up a lot of our art, we've purchased a lot of the furniture we needed, and we're slowly getting organized. I think this method of a gradual move is better in a lot of ways. You're not pressured to organize everything all at once. You can sit back and see if you like what you've done before you proceed. The initial way that you set things up often isn't the best, and this gives us time to rearrange and think about what we're doing along the way. I think the next trip to the old condo will be the last time moving stuff. Every week we bring 6-10 more boxes of stuff over here. Now it's to the point of fairly useless junk that you own but never use.

The dining room table is supposed to get here "sometime in March." Hopefully by then we'll be completely ready for it. As of now, the dining room is where we put boxes of stuff and art in the interim. So, in turn, I promise you a video tour of the new house "sometime in March."